Of Braids and Questions
by NorthernDweller
Summary: One morning of their travels into Xadia, Rayla asks Callum for a favor.


"You nervous?"

Rayla stopped winding the strain of hair around her finger. Her gaze which had seconds before been staring off into the trees snapped back at the sound of Callum's voice. Her hand dropped from her hair and she busied herself with picking up her wetstone and returning to honing her blades.

"Nervous? Wha' would I be nervous about?"

"I don't know. But you've been sitting there playing with your hair for the last ten minutes," Callum said. He'd stopped drawing in his journal and instead had his head propped on his hand, examining Rayla. "Sure there's nothing on your mind?"

"Oh no," Rayla said with a laugh. "I was jus' thinking about how great it's going to be when we get to the nearest Moonshadow village. It'd be good to rest up for a day or two."

"Uh huh. You know you're scratching your swords, right?"

Rayla looked down at her hands which had still been working while she'd been talking. She'd been sliding the wetstone up and down the flat of the blade instead of the edge and faint scuff marks had begun to appear on the sword. She yelped and let go of the stone and began frantically trying to wipe the scuff marks out of the blades. After a moment, she stopped and her hand fell limp. She tightened it into a fist. She took a deep breath in, held it for a moment, and released it as quietly as possible.

"Actually..." she said, letting the word hang in the air for a moment. "I was wonderin' if you could...help me with somethin'," Her voice was little more than a murmur and her eyes were cast toward the ground.

"Sure. But you're probably better at sharpening those than I am," Callum said, setting his sketchbook and pencil aside. Rayla looked down at the sword, then back toward Callum with a sidelong glance.

"No, nothing like that. It might sound silly, but...d'ya think you could help me braid my hair?"

Callum blinked.

"Erm," he said.

Rayla's face flushed red and she picked up the stone once more.

"Never mind," she said. "Sorry, silly question."

She began running the stone up and down the blade's edge with perfect, precision strokes, completely focused on the task at hand. She barely noticed Callum's approach until he sat down next to her.

"That's not silly at all," he said. "I mean...I don't know how good it'll be, but I can give it a shot."

Rayla's hands slowed and then came to a stop.

"Alrigh' then,"

Rayla turned to face him and sat cross-legged on the thick grass, still damp with morning dewdrops. She folded her swords and set them to the side. Callum got down onto his knees and for a moment they just sat there.

"Oh," Callum said, blinking. "You want me to—"

"Yeah, jus' go ahead—"

"So it's okay if I—"

"Sure, jus' this part—"

"Then I can—"

"Here," Rayla said. She gathered a strain of hair and offered it to Callum. He reached out haltingly and took it, still unmoved from his kneeling position.

"Erm," Rayla said. "You'll prob'ly need to be a bit closer than that,"

"Oh. Okay."

Callum inched closer to Rayla along the ground until they were nearly face-to-face. His eyes darted to hers for a moment, then he became very interested in a tree just behind her.

"So..." he said. "How exactly do I do this?"

"Oh, it's easy," Rayla said. "You jus' make three pieces, then you just cross 'em over each other like this," She took the strain of her hair back from Callum's hands, then demonstrated for him.

"So...just left side, right side, over, under, right? Think I've got it."

He took the strains of hair back into his hands and began folding them over each other the way that Rayla had showed him. He hadn't noticed before now just how short her bangs still were or how close to her face he had to be. Her warm breath played over his hands as he concentrated on his task, his brow creased in concentration. Rayla's eyes flitted to his for a brief second, then returned to their intense gaze toward the ground. A bird chirped on a branch of a nearby tree.

"You know," Callum said, breaking the silence, "it sounds like you're a pro at this. Just didn't feel like doing it yourself?"

Rayla's face flushed red.

"It's not that," she said. "It's jus'—I can't. Not really."

Callum arched an eyebrow but kept on.

"You were doing great though," he said. "Seriously, it's probably better than I'm doing."

"No, I didn' mean that I can't. It's just that...I can't. One of those Moonshadow things, you know?"

This time Callum did pause.

"No, I don't know. But okay."

Rayla's eyes darted toward the tree line. She took a shaky breath.

"Erm...well, with Moonshadow elves, a braid is more than just somethin' that looks nice. It's something tha'—"

"Hey, I think I'm done," Callum said.

Rayla released a breath that she didn't know she'd been holding and a smile broke across her face.

"Oh, great!" She said, pulling a metal tie from one of her pockets. "Then we'll jus' tie it off...and done!" She finished clasping the tie around the braid. "How's it look?"

"I like it," Callum said with a smile. "But it does kind of hide your eyes from the side. So maybe if you just...um...here." He brushed his fingers against the braid, tucking it back behind Rayla's ear. She shivered.

"You cold?" Callum asked.

"No," Rayla said quickly, her face flushed. "I'm just...a wee bit ticklish, that's all."

Callum laughed and leaned back on the ground. The dampness from the grass seeped through his clothing, but the crisp coolness was refreshing in its own way. He felt the grass shift when Rayla laid in the grass next to him.

"I think only another day or two 'til we come to a village. Depends on if the weather holds," she said. Her voice was airy and preoccupied with the clouds floating lazily by in the morning sky.

"Mm-hmm. So what were you going to say a minute ago? About braids and Moonshadow elves?"

Rayla hesitated.

"Oh...I thought you'd forgot about tha',"

"Are you kidding? I love learning about that stuff! Magic, cultures...and I love learning about you."

Rayla didn't reply. She simply lay there in the cool grass, eyes fixed upward. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in and out.

"Right. Well, you know how sometimes you want to show other people somethin' but you can't really show it? But you really want other people to know?"

Callum blinked.

"Uh...I'm not sure I'm following," he said.

"Moonshadow elves aren't really known for being open," Rayla said. "We stick to ourselves, don't talk about feelings too much, that kind o' thing. But there are still ways that we show the way we feel about others. An' one of em are these," she said, playing with her new braid. "I couldn't do this myself because then it wouldn't mean anything. But if someone else does it, then it becomes special. Because you don't let anyone get close to you, it's a really important thing when someone does."

Quiet fell upon the clearing. Rayla looked over to Callum. He was staring at her, almost through her, his gaze focused but indirect. Rayla's gaze returned to the sky. Talking about these things seemed to open the floodgates of the feelings that she'd long been taught to keep bottled inside. Yet the more she talked, the more she couldn't help herself from talking more.

"My mom gave me my first one," she said. And in her memories, she was back in time a dozen years, rocking on the edge of a small boulder while her mother tried to hold her still. With deft fingers, she had spun Rayla's hair into a fine pattern that seemed to contain hundreds of different shapes. When she'd finished, Rayla had looked into a nearby pond and shouted with joy at her new look. Her mother had hugged her and tossed her gently into the air.

Rayla's mouth turned down and she pressed the memory from her mind. She wouldn't—couldn't—allow herself to remember them in those happy ways. She reminded herself of how, after hearing of her parents' cowardice, she'd torn the braid out of her hair nearly hard enough to rip the hair from her head.

She was more fond of the next braid she'd gotten. It had been years later, after Rayla had been taken in by Runaan and taught the way of the sword. Their team of assassins had been on a mission—her first real mission—patrolling the Outer Wood and they'd encountered much more dangerous creatures than they'd anticipated. When they'd come across the largest stonefell wolf that Rayla had ever seen, she'd allowed her composure to crumble and it saw her as the weakest one there. It charged at her, its rocky face snarled. She survived only when another of their group stepped in front of her and deflected its attack, badly breaking his arm in the process.

That night, Rayla had sat away from the group while they had their dinner. Runaan had come to her afterward, their faces illuminated only by the faint glow of flickering fire-light. He had said nothing, only managed to tie for her a small braid with his strong, calloused fingers. Her eyes had watered with tears and she'd thrown her arms around him. They sat there for what seemed like the entire night and for the first time in years, she felt like she had a family again. She still hadn't forgiven the faceless soldier that had shot that braid from her head at the Banther Lodge.

"It's not something that you do yourself," Rayla said, coming back to the present and its peaceful cool morning. "It's something that someone else does for you. Something done by the person that means more to you than anything in the world."

Her words hung as an echo in the clearing. Callum was sitting next to her, looking at her with an expression that she couldn't quite place. She could hear her heart beat in her ears, feel it in her hands. It felt like it'd fly out of her chest at any moment. She tightened her grip on the blades of damp grass. It was too quiet. She looked back toward the ground and her mind raced as she tried to think of something to break the silence.

"You did a great job wi' this," she said, playing with her new braid. "And you know, the three pieces of hair are kind of like the three of us, right?" Rayla said. "They're like you and me and then Zym who brought us together. I mean, keeps us together. I mean—"

Rayla forgot anything else she was going to say when Callum's lips met hers.

The world fell out from underneath her. From a thousand miles away, she could feel her heart beating like she'd never known before. She was aware of a whimper that escaped her throat and she felt hands (were they hers?) run themselves through Callum's hair. And through all of this, they were falling. They swooped and spun and whirled through the air, caught in a free fall. Nothing above them, nothing below, no way to tell which was up or down.

Rayla opened her eyes that she hadn't even realized she'd closed. To her amazement, they were still on the ground, having not moved an inch from their original position. A sigh tore itself from her throat and she sat there, her head spinning.

Callum's face was red and he quickly looked away from her. He opened and closed his mouth several times before any words came out.

"I—I don't know what—" he stammered. "I'm sorry."

Rayla cupped his face in her hands and softly guided his gaze to meet hers.

"I'm not."

This time the kiss was more desperate, more freeing. Rayla felt herself leaning forward and realized that she was pushing Callum backwards. But then his hand found its way around her waist and they let themselves fall onto the grass. There was the smell of the grass and the chill of the mid-morning air and the two of them, nothing else.

They parted for a moment and Rayla's eyes grew hot.

"Callum," she whispered, her face inches from his, their breaths mingling in the air between them. "I've wanted to tell you—"

"It's okay," he said with a smile. "I think I knew."

Rayla let out a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.

"An' you didn't do anything," she said. "Typical man,"

"Well, you just hid the way you felt," Callum said, his smile growing to match hers. His eyes glinted in the misty morning light. "Typical Moonshadow elf,"

Rayla laughed and threw her arms around him. They held each other close, their hearts a mismatched but strong, harmonic beat against each other's chest. Callum's scarf rubbed against her face and she breathed in deeply, trying to take in as much of him as she could.

Her mind was somehow spinning and frozen at the same time. In the back of her mind, she thought about the differences between the two of them—she'd never heard of a human and an elf being together. It wasn't even something that she'd ever think about, and she knew that none of the other elves would be as accepting of humans as she was. They'd face challenges that she couldn't even begin to imagine. She didn't even know if they'd make it to the end of their mission in one piece.

But then Callum smiled against her cheek and they pulled apart.

"You know," Callum said with a lopsided grin, running a hand through his hair. "I'm getting kind of shaggy. Mind doing a braid for me next?"

A pause.

Then they were falling again.

* * *

_Author's Note: I promised myself that I wouldn't get too involved in shipping with this series. Well...things happen. This was a quick idea that popped into my head and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote something about it. Hope you enjoy!_

_Originally posted on AO3, figured it could use a home here as well._


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